


dark, twisted fantasy (turned into reality)

by hellstrider



Series: A War of Bone and Silt [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Stiles, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings, Derek isn't a good alpha yet but lord he's trying, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Everyone Is Alive, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Post-Episode: s03e03 Fireflies, Semi-Okay Peter Hale, Series, Slow Burn, Sort Of, Stiles helped Derek over the summer, Stiles knows he's Different, erica lives, this is gonna be big oof, we in it now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 16:46:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19398271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellstrider/pseuds/hellstrider
Summary: Heather is dead on a slab in the morgue, but Boyd and Erica are alive.His pack is alive, and though the alphas are still circling them he has more hope now than he's had in a long fucking time. Which feels wrong, because people are dying still, but it's not - it's not his people.And isn't that fucked?





	dark, twisted fantasy (turned into reality)

**Author's Note:**

> so i finally gathered enough courage to write for my OG fandom omg
> 
> this is an au where stiles helped derek when the betas went missing and stiles Knows he's Different. picks up after the events of "fireflies" in s3 except my queen erica reyes is alive because fuck u jeff
> 
> anyway
> 
> xoxo have the first installment of a war of bone and silt!  
> title from MS MR's Bones

In the clinging aftermath of recovering not only Boyd and Erica, but also Cora Hale – fucking _Cora Hale_ \- Stiles finds himself pulling up outside Derek’s latest hideout. It’s a step up from the train station and _far_ better than the burnt-out shell of the Hale house, but still – how many abandoned warehouses can they go through before they have nothing left in Beacon Hills to run to?

Stiles is still suspended between a panic attack and what he can only call absolutely _hysterical_ relief as he parks his jeep. He digs into his glovebox to make sure the hex bag keeping him masked from the alphas is still there, the smell of wolfsbane and other unsavory things wafting briefly through the car and making his eyes burn. He’d found the spell on some witch forum on the internet over the summer, and so far, the results have been far and beyond expectations.

Results, as in, _he hadn’t become alpha chow yet_. Stiles flips the glovebox shut and slumps back in his seat, breathing out even and slow as he tries to force himself to lean into the relief and away from the panic.

Heather is dead on a slab in the morgue, but Boyd and Erica are _alive._

His pack is _alive,_ and though the alpha pack is still circling them he has more hope now than he’s had in a long fucking time. Which feels wrong, because people are _dying_ still, but it’s not – it’s not _his_ people.

And isn’t _that_ fucked?

The chaos of his guilt clatters wildly through him until a pair of hazel eyes appears in the wide, open doorway of the crumbling warehouse. Stiles feels the nerves in his gut settle somewhat as Derek sidles across the makeshift driveway, and, bullying his legs to obey, Stiles slides out of his jeep. 

They meet halfway between car and hideout, and for a moment, Derek just watches him; it should be uncomfortable, but it isn’t. The moment swells, takes on wings and teeth, and Stiles knows he couldn’t fucking be anywhere else but right here, under the weight of those hazel-green eyes. Not with Scott, not at home with too much caffeine in his system and fear churning in his gut, fear of what waited outside to snap him up in the night.

Derek doesn’t ask him how he got here. Stiles doesn’t tell him, but the wolf doesn’t seem overly surprised to see him, and Stiles really doesn’t know what to make of that.

All he knows is he needed to be here, where Erica and Boyd were _alive_ and safe with their alpha - with fucking _Derek Hale,_ who has been the only constant since they plunged headfirst into the dark underbelly of the supernatural. Derek Hale, who tries so hard even when he fails, who keeps getting back up and keeps going at the world claws-first.

Derek, who has suffered more than Stiles thought a person could suffer and came out on the other side with a shell of red-hot fury around him that hid a gentleness he tried to bite through just underneath.

 _I was never supposed to be the alpha,_ Stiles remembers him saying one summer night as they sat on the burnt steps of the Hale house. _It was supposed to be Laura. She would’ve been so much fucking better at this._

 _Guess we’ll just have to get your pups back, then,_ Stiles had said. _So you can get better at this, too._

And he’ll never forget how Derek had looked at him then, like he was looking at the full moon, and it had coiled up at the base of Stiles’ spine and kept camp there ever since.

In the back of his mind, Stiles hears Allison saying, _you two orbit each other like you’ve got an entire solar system between you, you know that, right?_

The air between them is _sticky._ The past few months - ever since he bullied his way into helping Derek look for his pack - it’s been like this. Sticky, electric, hazy – like there’s a miniature storm gathering in the chasm between them, and Stiles has a realization and an understanding growing like a weed in his chest he won’t look too close at.

He can practically taste the tattered energy rolling off the alpha in droves, feels it like the withdrawal of his Adderall and the high of it hitting all at once. Derek’s nostrils flare, picking up the lingering wolfsbane from the hex bag in his glovebox, and Stiles gives him an apologetic smile he doesn’t feel.

“Just in case.”

“It stays on you.”

A pause. “I know.”

Derek reaches out then to squeeze his shoulder, subtly scenting him, and after a beat Stiles grasps his forearm in return. The alpha’s nostrils flare again, and he chuffs, a wolfish sound Stiles has grown horribly fond of.

“You smell like the hospital. And death.”

He sounds like he wants to fight it. It almost makes Stiles smile. Out of anyone in the world, he’d bet on Derek to take on an invisible thing and win.

“Lydia and I went to the morgue.”

“And?”

A pause. Heather’s ghost is right at his heels.

“We should talk about it,” he says, and Derek inhales slow and even through his nose.

“I heard over the scanner they found another body.”

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut. Derek moves closer, close enough he can feel the impossible heat radiating from the alpha.

“Yeah,” Stiles says hoarsely. “Yeah. They did.”

Derek’s hand is an anchor on his shoulder. Stiles doesn’t let go of his forearm. People are dying, but Erica and Boyd and _fucking Cora Hale_ are alive.

And so is Derek.

“How’re the kids?”

“They’re only a year younger than you.”

“A year brings a whole lotta wisdom, Derek,” Stiles says blithely, and when the wolf rolls his eyes, he feels something settle in his chest.

“C’mon,” Derek grumbles, fingers clenching around his shoulder one more time before he lets go. “We’ll talk. But Erica’s about to lose her goddamn mind. She heard the jeep first.”

It spreads through his chest, warm and fond, and this time when the smile comes, it doesn’t leave. Derek leads the way through the crumbling, open-fronted part of the warehouse and down a set of stone stairs to a rusty old metal door. It’s barely open a foot when a blur of blonde and red comes hurtling out from inside and Stiles is nearly sent to the floor when Erica slams into him.

“Ohmygod!” she sobs, right in his ear, and Stiles holds her tight as she buries her face into his neck.

She smells like lavender shampoo and she’s wearing a red shirt way too big, so big it goes to her knees; when she pulls back, she looks so young it makes Stiles’ chest _ache._ Without any makeup all he can see is the Erica Reyes before she took the bite, who was painfully shy and who he never saw, and he can’t believe she’s even standing here right now.

Tears burn and bite at the back of his throat. He cups Erica’s face and the wolf half-laughs, half-sobs.

“You good, Catwoman?” he manages. Erica nods, blonde curls bouncing as her lower lip trembles.

“Yeah,” and she chokes on it, “yeah, Batman, I’m okay.”

Erica takes his hand then, tangling their fingers together to lead him into the back room of the warehouse. Deaton looks up from a rickety wooden table where he’s pouring over ancient tomes, and fucking Peter Hale lurks in the far back corner.

Stiles tries not to visibly bristle, tries not to give Peter the satisfaction. Judging by Deaton’s exasperated exhale, he thinks he fails. Peter grins like he’s got something in his teeth and gives Stiles a little wave, claws out; Derek growls a warning, one that makes the hair on the back of Stiles’ neck stand on end, but not out of fear.

Erica pitches a whine, low and quiet, and then Boyd is emerging from a shadowed nook, eyes red-rimmed but human and sane.

“Heard you, uh.” Boyd’s voice is hoarse. “Heard you helped Derek try and find us.”

“‘ _Try_ ’ being the operative word,” Stiles says hoarsely, glancing to where Isaac hovers nearby, “but yeah.”

Boyd thumps his back manfully when they hug, gives him a quick nod as he pulls away with watery eyes, and Stiles grips his shoulder for a moment before he looks again to Isaac. The prickle of irritation that comes is mostly borne of habit, but Stiles has seen death and this – this is too big of a thing now, too big of a world now to let petty shit bog him down.

The lives around him have been in peril so many fucking times. Too many times. Isaac is a dick in the way Jackson was, but he looks as young as Stiles thinks he himself should feel - but he doesn’t, and that means it’s on him to make something better of this.

“You did good,” he says, clearing his throat when Isaac looks up sharp and surprised. “You, uh - you really did good, Lahey.”

He sounds like Finstock, but Isaac's expression goes soft at the edges, eyes unguarded and wide.

“Just a _stunning_ review,” Peter drawls after a beat, and Stiles can _feel_ it when Derek flashes his alpha-red eyes at the wolf.

“We heard that there’s been another body found,” Deaton cuts in, and Stiles sucks his lips between his teeth and nods.

The vet is watching him, almost staring through him, and it feels too heavy – everything feels too heavy. The mere fact that he’s here right now feels heavy. Stiles should be with Scott, he thinks, or with his dad, but instead he’d come here. Come right back to Derek Hale and his ragtag pack of beta wolves that had no proper idea what the hell they were getting into when they said yes.

“We should talk,” Deaton says, and Stiles can’t stop the somewhat bitter laugh that punches out of his gut.

“ _Now_ we should talk? _Un_ believable.”

“Stiles,” Derek starts, but something – something clamors up in Stiles’ throat and a dam breaks in his chest.

“No, you know what?” He narrows his eyes and Deaton lifts his chin. “For _months_ it’s been riddles and vague hints and ‘ _you’ll know when you feel it’_ and it’s _bullshit._ Ever since you mentioned my – what the fuck did you call it? The ‘ _spark_ ’? It’s all been _bullshit._ All any of us has gotten is a whole lot of _nothing_ from you. People are _dying,_ doc. _Kids._ The wolves almost –“

“Could you stop it from happening, Stiles?”

The vet sidles away from the table, and the air grows thick. A door in the back of the room opens and a sweaty Cora Hale appears, looking so much like Derek Stiles thinks her eyes might turn red.

“Could you stop it all?”

“If I could, I _would_ have,” Stiles snarls, and they’re all watching them now. “You know I would have.”

“And yet even I don’t know what kind of creature is doing this, or what connection they might have to Deucalion and the alpha pack – if there is a connection at all,” Deaton admits. “But I do know what you could be. What you had to find in yourself and make a choice to follow.”

“ _Him?”_ Cora breaks in, incredulous. “It’s _him?_ ”

“What’s _me?”_ Stiles demands, and Deaton arches a brow. His heart kicks in his chest, and one of Derek’s big hands comes over his shoulder.

“Why did you come here tonight, Stiles?” Deaton closes the space between them; he smells like old things and earth and something sterile. Stiles stands his ground, breathing quick through his nose.

“You didn’t go to Scott. You didn’t go to your father. You came _here_. Just as you did when the alpha pack took Erica and Boyd. You chose to help Derek, even if it put you in the firing line. Your father. So tell me why.”

More questions instead of answers. Stiles grits his teeth; he can feel the burr of Derek’s intense desire to step between them, to put his body between the vet and Stiles. He can feel Erica’s whine before it happens, can feel Isaac’s desperate desire to bury himself under a blanket and hide from the conflict. Boyd is a mountain, but even he seems frayed.

And a final blow, hitting the nail right in the head; “did Derek tell you where he fled to, Stiles? Did he tell you where this hideout was?"

Peter growls low, and it almost sounds like a laugh. Stiles wishes he’d brought the stupid internet-made wolfsbane hex bag with him.

“ _No,”_ Stiles bites out. “He didn’t.”

Deaton leans back, a somewhat satisfied smile curving his mouth.

“What, one fucking summer fling and suddenly he’s our emissary?” Cora demands. “Look at him! He’s not even the one who found us!”

Derek snarls, snapping his teeth, and Cora shoots it right back. Stiles’ gut goes hot, because it wasn’t – ever like that, and he refuses to look any closer at the heat rushing up in his chest. _Emissary_ rings through him like a fever, and Deaton looks at him like he can feel it, too.

The truth is, though, he knows it started – the overwhelming, ominous _It –_ started long before he showed up on the doorstep of the burnt Hale house with his laptop in his backpack and a fierce determination not to be chased away.

He doesn’t know when it started for Derek, but for Stiles, it began the moment he hit the water of the swimming pool and dug his hands into the wolf’s shirt to pull him back to the surface. It began with “ _it’s an abomination_ ,” and Derek looking at him like _that,_ the first time he looked at Stiles like he wasn’t just the goofy fucking sidekick to Scott McCall’s utterly incompetent furry ass.

It began, and Stiles followed it right to this moment. Against all and any better judgement, he followed it, because he became _attached._ He did the worst thing he knew he could do and tripped hard and fast into the clutch of the sad little wolves Derek Hale gathered together and tried to save.

He tripped hard and fast into the pack, and right into Derek _fucking_ Hale.

“Not just an Emissary,” Deaton says. “There’s a spark in you, Mr. Stilinski, and it’s a powerful one. If you choose this path, it will grow. You will become more than a druid, more than a guide. Few Emissaries have a spark as bright as yours. You _could_ change this - you could join this fight, truly join it, make this pack stronger than it ever has been. But once you're in it, you're in it."

“I'm _already fucking in it!"_ Stiles cries, throwing his arms wide. "Why can't you do it? Why haven't you made the pack stronger, _doc?"_

"He was our mother's Emissary," Cora snarls. "He _can't_ be Derek's."

Stiles thinks his molars might lose a bit of bone when he grinds his teeth. "You didn’t tell me any of this before, _because_ …?”

“It has to be a choice made freely, of your own will. Not made of obligation or threat.”

Stiles turns to Derek when the wolf speaks, and the rest of the room holds its breath. Derek looks bereft and _so_ guilty and it slams into Stiles like a real force, a punch to the chest. He stares at the wolf, gaping, and a muscle jumps in Derek’s jaw.

Stiles sees in alpha-red.

“You _knew?”_

A ripple goes through the pack. Isaac slides into a nook behind one of the steel beam pillars and Erica seems like she’s torn between the two of them, lip caught in her teeth and eyes huge and watery.

Shockingly, it’s Peter Hale who steps forward and gathers the beta wolves, saying, “alright, let’s let mom and dad duke it out without an audience, you can all listen from the next room,” as he herds them towards the door Cora guards with her eyes still fierce and yellow.

Derek folds his arms over his chest and lifts his chin, but Stiles knows how vulnerable the wolf feels. How strung out, how unraveled. The pack is fragile, has always been fragile, and it’s so much worse now, even though Erica and Boyd are back. The pack is fragile, and Derek is weak, and Stiles can feel it like syrup sticky on his skin.

He grinds his teeth.

“I couldn’t influence you,” Derek says. “It had to be all you. It’s why Deaton couldn’t tell you. The Emissary finds the pack, not the other way around. It had to be your choice, Stiles."

For some reason, it hurts, and Stiles doesn’t exactly know why. It hurts, hurts that Derek kept it, that neither he nor Deaton even hinted at what he might be hurtling towards. But not because he doesn’t want it.

Which, _fuck him_. Fuck all of it.

“You _couldn’t,_ or you didn’t want to, Derek?”

“ _Don’t,”_ the wolf snarls. “ _Don’t_ fucking do that. You know you’re a part of this pack, you know you always have been. Despite what _Scott_ thinks or tells you, you’ve always got a place with us.”

Stiles’ throat goes thick. He wants to defend Scott, wants to defend anything he’s said as petty bullshit or the stress of suddenly being able to grow claws and heal from bullets – but he can’t.

 _You know he’s just using you,_ comes floating through his ears, and it _burns._

It’d been a grim fucking day when Scott found out what Stiles had been up to – found out by sheer accident, not because he asked where his best friend was disappearing to. Found out, because he caught Stiles fresh off a twenty-four-hour research binge and reeking of the Hale house.

_He doesn’t care about you, or them! Just power!_

But Stiles knows better. He’s seen Derek red-eyed in an entirely human way. He’s seen him break. He’s seen what his guilt has done, how much of the gentleness it’s chewed up and left bleeding inside the alpha.

"Telling me I could make you stronger is a _hell_ of an influence, just fucking saying," Stiles says, looking towards Deaton. "Or is that a loophole only vets get to use?"

"This is the crossroads," Deaton replies, as if he was expecting the remark, and Stiles sucks in his cheeks. "You had to reach it alone. Now you have. Coming here was the final step. Now the truth can find you, Mr. Stilinski. Now, I can guide you."

A pause. For a blurring, blinding moment, Stiles hates magic and its intricacies, hates its rituals and its patterns and its _fucking mystery._ He hates it, and he hates Derek Hale.

 _No,_ comes a wry voice that's his own, but a little wiser, _you don't. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, Stilinski. Pony the fuck up or get lost._

He turns his gaze to Derek, who looks so stupidly soft in his fucking green Henley and his effortlessly styled black hair. He looks stupidly soft, and Stiles - Stiles can't fight the rampant urge to keep him that way. He can't fight the rampant urge to dig his human claws into him and put himself between Derek and the world that tried to burn him to the ground.

“What happens if I don’t want it? Any of it. If I wanted to just – turn and leave, _right now_.”

It’s a cruel test, but one he needs Derek to face. Derek’s eyes shoot up, and they don’t need to go alpha ruby for Stiles to know that stare is bleeding. The alpha exhales like he’s been stabbed, but he’s quick to gather himself – ever quick to shut down his emotions, to put them behind a mask of steel. Derek lifts his head and his jaw clenches again and Stiles wonders how the wolf has any teeth left at all.

All he knows, and he knew it from the beginning, is those teeth would never turn to him to break skin and bone. All he knows is that Derek, even if Stiles left, would still be as loyal as he ever was. And that’s what makes him worth staying beside, even if - even if he didn't feel all the things he won't look too close at. Even if he didn't feel those things, Derek is a beast more loyal than even the sun is to the sky.

“It’s your choice,” Derek says, even though it sounds like he’s chewing glass when he says it. “I’ll accept whatever you pick, Stiles. You have a place here, but you aren’t – you’re free. All of you are.”

Stiles snorts. The wolf is tense, as tense as he was when he was paralyzed by Kanima venom. Deaton glances between them, and there’s a smile building behind the vet’s eyes. He knows. They all fucking know – everyone knows, of course, but the one it means the most to.

“You’re _so_ full of shit, sourwolf,” Stiles tells Derek then, and those eyebrows shoot up, “thank fucking god you have me. _Stupid_ , of course I’m in. I’ve _been_ in. I’m still mad enough to line my windowsill in mountain ash so your dumb ass has to use the front door, but fuck. I’m here, aren’t I?”

And Derek, who he doesn’t think has had a proper emotional response to anything since he was ten, looks bewildered when he says, “you should always line your window in mountain ash, it’s too dangerous now not to,” and Stiles turns his gaze skyward for deliverance with a groaning, “oh _my_ god.”

“Does this mean you’re staying? With us?”

They all look ‘round to find Derek’s three betas hovering in the door. Isaac sounds apprehensive, and it’s in moments like these that Stiles looks at the wolf and thinks of him being packed inside a fridge by his own dad in a basement. Erica clings to both Isaac and Boyd’s arms, and Stiles never thought he could pack so many feelings inside and still leave room to breathe.

“Yeah,” he huffs. “Yeah. It means I’m saying. Who else is gonna clean up after your alpha? _Peter?_ You’re a _mess_ without me, admit it.”

“Yeah,” Erica chokes first, breaking away from her fellow betas to throw her arms around his neck, teary and sniffling again.

Stiles looks towards Derek over the blonde wolf’s head. The alpha hasn’t stopped staring at him, hasn’t stopped grinding his teeth. The wolf looks like he’s strung between fight or flight, and he’s edging real close to the latter.

And that’s the thing – the thing that’s _so hard_ with him. Derek is always leaving, and Stiles is always just trying to fucking catch up to him. To Derek, who is a thing of chewed-up grief and enough misplaced blame that could fill a fucking ocean. It’ll take more than magic to pull him out of the water, but Stiles has done it once. He’ll do it again.

Stiles gives him a faint smile then, one that doesn’t hit his eyes, but he still feels it. The alpha lifts his chin and while he doesn’t return the gesture, he also doesn’t tuck tail and leave, and he still doesn’t look away.

He calls it a win, and something inside Stiles’ chest bares its fangs.

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't watched s3 in YEARS please forgive me but also i want alan deaton to punch me in the face i love him sm


End file.
